Sunday, September 26, 2010

Last weekend the church we attend celebrated it's 300th anniversary. 300 years. That's a long time. That's older than our country. Heck, it's 22 years older then George Washington, and that dude has been dead forever.

To celebrate, the church held a big shindig and invited the whole community. There was free food all day, free games for the kids, and free entertainment like jugglers, ventriloquists, and rock bands. We even invited other youth leaders from area churches to take part in a bullriding competition.

I was there with my video camera to capture the activities and put together this little re-cap. Happy 300, Willow Street Mennonite!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

I've been editing and putting together goofy little videos since I was around 15 years old. Unlike today, personal computers weren't something every household had and high schools weren't even close to offering video editing courses. iMovie and Windows Movie Maker weren't even on my radar and I was editing movies by hooking up my video camera to my VCR and pressing "Pause" and "Record" at the right place. It took forever and the video distortion lines that would pop up every time I paused the VCR were annoying to say the least. I wasn't able to stop and check how it was coming along for fear I lose my exact place and end up with a couple of frames of black and white "snow" in between shots, so when I put my early videos together, it was done with a "Wow I hope this is turning out OK" prayer repeatedly running through my head.

In 2003 I bought my first video editing software for my computer and decided to teach myself how to edit digitally. I was living in Nashville and had plenty of time on my hands. The very first thing I edited on the computer was a music video. I wasn't looking to do anything epic, just something really basic and somewhat short to jump in with. The shortest song I could find was on an old Sesame Street CD and the final thing came out looking like this:

For my first stab at it, I still think it turned out OK. It's goofy and dorky and ridiculous so I guess it fits me pretty well.

Since then, between videos I've done for work and stuff I've fiddled around with on my own, I've put together just about 700 videos. Zoinks. I didn't realize that number was so high until just now.Granted, some of them don't really involve a lot of editing but hey, 700 is 700.

The latest video I worked on was one for ukulele singer/songwriter Phredd. The whole text-only video thing is pretty big right now, and we've never shied away from a trend. His song "Text the Cell" was perfect for this style.

It was fun putting it together. A lot more went into it than one might think, but I love the simplicity of it and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I started my video-editing adventures with a kids song...and 700 videos later it's still something I enjoy going back to.

But that doesn't mean if I saw The Wiggles on the side of the highway I wouldn't swerve to avoid them. I mean, come on.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The other day we were at Universal Studios' City Walk and we came across the iFLY Hollywood Indoor Skydiving/Vertical Wind Tunnel thing. It's basically skydiving without the billion-foot fall.

I'm not usually the kind of person to post Oh-Look-At-This-Kid-Aren't-They-Cute kinda posts, but I filmed this one little girl trying to master the wind and all I can say is, Oh look at this kid. Isn't she cute?

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Very funny, Sarah. I just found this picture on our camera, which I had no idea was taken. The timestamp tells me it was taken last Friday night, one day into my battle against being sick. This photo is proof that no amount of MAD Magazine cartoon history can stand up to the power of NyQuil.